Before Everything
by mirari6
Summary: This was Roy Mustang before he became flame alchemist. This was before he met and earned Riza Hawkeye's trust. This was before everything. [Includes alchemical geekery, yay long time frame, enjoy :) ]
1. Part One Chapter 1

**Author's notes: **Every time the humonculi go on about how Roy's flame alchemy might be the most (badass) annoying there is... I always wonder how in like three panels, Riza just entrusts this ultra-dangerous research to someone she treats so formally, like a stranger. So this is the mostly canon longer version of how Roy does earn up to the research, with all the bells and whistles of feels with Riza Hawkeye. Hope you guys stick around :)

disclaimer: don't own the characters except the ultra tiny ones, and some obvious spolier alerts !

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As a child you'll try to wrap your mind around a concept.

Like: 'why can't I wear this shirt? It's as clean as all the others, and I like it, and there's no other reason why I can't.'

'No. No that's not how the world works son. People see you everyday and have no difficulty remembering the clothes you wear. If they see you in that same white shirt they will say 'oh that mustang child is so poor that his father cannot afford to buy him more shirts.'.'The father hands him a different shirt gruffly, and returns to business. It never occurred to the little boy to take notice of other people's dress. He only noticed what they said or if they had interesting stories, but he put on a different shirt anyway. Now he's told he has to look at people's clothes, decide if the clothes are nice enough so that person was 'to be respected'(?)

'That makes no sense.'

'People don't usually make sense son. But once you figure them out, we'll be fine'.

They shuffled out of the room, and they were. Roy had fun noticing this new found complexity, how grownups did wear elaborate colorful things to impress courts and what father called clients. It didn't matter if a rule was logical, as long as the world was consistent enough about following it. He liked knowing secret 'rules' and 'natures' and developed a keen eye on people as a young obedient child.

There was this one anomaly though, a caravan driver he always found helpful, who always wore this green shirt. Maybe there were more adult person rules he didn't know about, so that a helpful caravan man is allowed wear the same green shirt.

'Hey mister, you just wore that green shirt yesterday? in fact I remember you wearing it all the time, why is that?'

A drawn out pause.

'well roy, I'm not as rich as you. I don't have as much clothes.'

Roy felt the blood rush to his face as the driver then rushed to load goods. Well, there was another adult rule that he missed and he felt a special kind of terrible. You never point out to poor people that they are poor, it is both cruel and rude.

From then on, goodness, he followed all the gaddamn rules. Say you look lovely madame so and so when she is surely not, and give undivided attention to mr. that and that because even his jokes are half truths, and that might be helpful.

'Now Roy, for heaven's sake ! Again and again measure those limp green leaves in silent shadows away from police, because damn it roy my business is worth a ten of you, you worthless, worthless! child. that parcel is worth killing a man for.'

Roy always thought that part still made no sense. He's was the best representative opium dealers have seen for centuries and he can always find a 'diplomatic' solution, to trading deals and legislation -that would leave everyone happy and satisfied with their pieces of reality. He understood and learned well, like no one else, the illogical rules of human forces that made business so deliciously lucrative.

He'd like to think himself as someone who is very very important. Especially when he'd throw the opium at night into the ink blank river and watch it drift away just like all the other things in this world. It burns him, how he could run away from home and this terrible place, if his illogical mind didn't tell him that he wanted to love a father. That particular rule, made no sense at all.

In one of his assignments, Roy was traveling in a caravan with a hindu brahman, a christian priest and a muslim imam. Roy asked why is it that man can be so illogical(unreasonable, imperfect).

The priest said that man was once immortal, ruled by a logical God until Adamu sinned. Where 'a damu' were the hebrew words for 'the human.' His fall can only be redeemed with love.

The imam said that Allah himself is not perfectly immutable but changing: Allah had to create mercy to become a merciful deity: he created one hundred parts of mercy and distributed ninety-nine amongst His creation and kept one for Himself. Man similarly changes, reasonable in one action and unreasonable in the next.

The brahman said that man was too small to fully grasp dharma, cosmic law and order, and all of the universes. Such is dharma, such is life.

The three scholars were quite an interesting to watch, in their enthusiasm they all looked the same, waving their hands and spewing verses like beautiful literature. The littered jargon of the great religions meshed into each other as if they spoke of a single truth, from the conflicted soul of mankind. Roy thought that maybe all them can be true.

He heard the news in prison. It wasn't his first time spending a few nights in jail, and just like one of his cellmates said: it had food and shelter, which was a fairly improved state compared to most places these days, with food rations, without border conflicts.

It was uncomfortable there, packed like sardines in a damp unit, reminding him how suffocating it was to be in a faceless crowd. The bunk beside him was occupied by a petitw thief named Sam who was announcing the headlines from a crumpled sheet of news for the benefit of the rest of the convicts.

'War on North! and the South! war on all of us !' (like it mattered.) Dick who was a large man with a tear drop tattoo on his left fist preferred days when beautiful actresses were printed big and bold alongside headlines. His laugh came from his belly the type that would infect the rest of the prisoners.

'All the skin we get now are grimy state alchemists!'

'WAhaha!"

'Not THOSE again!' The cell now was in a synchronized state of whining and objection. It's a national past time to talk and not not talk, admonish such unlawful creatures. It was a topic that was already stretched inside out, over under and about like an exhausting hot day that beats you down exhausted. It's an odd fetish honestly. Or anxiety, enthralling and terrorizing injected with media frenzy that feeds dark dreams.

'The creatures were now hired by the military.. downright creepy. '

Dick has already killed a man. That's how teardrop tattoos go around in jails, but Dick still finds them alchemist pretty fucked up.

'They could end the wars' said a tall dark man in the corner.

'There's always a war' Roy quipped.

Sam hushed the cell with the latest bits. There was news of new alchemy that trumped all others before it, as if all others were not dark enough. Invented by a civilian alchemist that could instantaneously produce combustive explosions at a distance of 200 meters, and sparking a damage radius of a full league! Shit! curses from different regions drums across the prison walls yawah! infinite gun powder with ten cannons at an instant. fdg guhsho. obviously militarized it's obviously militarized. shit man what kind of devil shit could you-

'Wait! 'Sam yells, 'he doesn't want to be a state alchemist.'

'Then he's obviously not real' Dick announces.

'We're in Amestris boy, your wife doesn't grow hair without the fuhrer knowing it.' others sound their agreement. can't be real. Sam continues reading from the paper, he's called the flame alchemist. That's just sick. Is he God? you're an idiot who couldn't even steal a purse sam! what do you know of God?. maybe lucifer! (a man from the adjacent cell is shouting) that could work! I mean hell on earth isn't such a far cry-

Roy grabs the paper during the distracted tangle and his eyes dart through the articles, out of habit actually. The paper was thick in his hands, war obituaries, even hangings. His mind jumped at this father's name listed below bodies caught in line of fire in Dar- Dar es Salaam?. Mind jumping at the new consequences, thoughts like fish in startled water wondering what it's supposed to feel like to lose a father, or a life.

Soon he was issued his one phone call and he realized the sudden silence of a dial tone. He could dial no one. He wracks his mind for someone outrageous enough to bail out a convict. She calls him 'Royboy' but what does it matter to him right now, he dialed for madame Christmas.


	2. Chapter 2

Titillation , overabundant feast of the senses. Other men proclaim me as the lucky bastard who gets to not only work, but also sleep in the widely acclaimed venus hostess bar. But really, please take it from me: it's not as fun as it sounds and I remember vomiting on my first day. Actually I remember the bath on my first day.

Madame Christmas was my father's sister and it made sense that she was in an equally shady and profitable business as father. Hers was fishing for information gathering from her all important clientele, all happily drinking and snuggling in her wine and women. The madame gave me one look, up and down and ordered me to look presentable, neat, polished -the works.

I was brashly made aware of how terrible you look after prison, but I knew how the rules went and I wanted to prove to madame Chris exactly how neat-looking I could get. I think I remember the bath not necessarily from the amount of grime I removed but the little things that until now, disturb me.

The sink was a beige rock color and perfectly round. A shoe shining solution in a tin can I kept in my cabinet. Another comfortable linen shirt I liked that I suddenly don't have anymore. You smell different and you're not sure if it's the soap or living with all these women and mix of perfume. A part of you dies when you leave all the things behind regardless if they say material things are beyond your physical person. It's my freaking baptism they call it. My new sisters practically manhandled the baby afterwards. They never thought 'I'd look _that _handsome' (Ha!). Overwhelming, the way they cooed over me, talked incessantly, introduced themselves, and asked about me, rallying around food and drinks. It was a little too much for me, the hugs the laughs, the investing in people for a longer amount of time. I was scrawny that time and awkward, very unlike my usual self. But the laughing really got to me, it won me over; it helps me forget.

And maybe I was infatuated once for one of them, but only the way you're infatuated with things that you see your own sadness reflected back to you.

To be clear I was in no point in time a host, and I was actually a bartender, which was actually pretty close to my previous job, addictive product, for comfort - and this one's even legal! The longer I stayed with madame, I've come to observe and fully appreciate her 's a beauty with dealing with raw information in an artistic subtle art rather than, say, pointing a gun to a guy's face.

I went about doing me own deals too, sometimes the information changing lives for the better. One time I befriended a border guard who told me about an obscure loophole in immigration proceedings I didn't even know about. Now I earned that bit in the most elegant arm wrestling match. Now we'd offer a service in Venus, fetches a good price, that includes me delivering refugees desperate for escape. It was a sensitive kind of trade, since an overselling of 'that product' would make it obvious to the authorities, not to mention it was something akin to trafficking. But madame had a heart, and we did this only a few times with far in betweens. I never got caught.

Most of the time I'd be actually tending a bar, as I was a bartender. Though I sometimes thought of it like a laboratory. I studied the fermentation process of some of the local beers and invested in some fine liquors. It no time at all I was already lighting fires on colored layered drinks, and composing some damn fine cocktails.

A favorite drink of mine is the submarine. White gin with two parts vodka. It's the performance that really sells it. You fill the vile drink in a small shot glass and cover it with an inverted bowl, preferably with a thick bottom. You flip the large glass and fill it with the second solution. Then seal the large bowl with a plate. You invert the plate and demonstrate how the trapped air in the shot glass attaches itself to the roof of the bowl. You then slam the bowl (preferably with towel) on bar counter and show how almost instantly the drink fizzles with bubbles as the shot glass falls off the roof of the bowl. The unique approach to carbonating the drink gives it a nice texture, and the plays with pressures gives it a fancy moniker of 'the submarine'. Clienteles always loved it because purposefully slamming glass seemed like an event, and I liked how clever it used the properties of the beverages. Just like how mixed drinks used different densities of liquor to layer colors and flavors, and how drinking with a narrow straw (inverting the flavor layers) makes the experience completely different. I'd like to think the shining glassware were like test tubes and I was in an alchemy lab, analyzing my customer like an unknown substance, and having a calculated method to prying him open. It sort of worked, and soon enough I was writing notes on persons rather than drinks.

I coded the notes, to hide it from my sisters but soon enough the code was getting to lengthy to remember. According to a regularly alcoholic doctor/ friend of mine the brain keeps logical, higher thinking orders in the outer extremities of the brain, while the emotional or more primitive parts were located at the center. I could only image how grotesque it was for them to around disturbing comatose people and over reading every electrical signal, but I took his word for it.

If the connectivity, the doctor said, is to be modeled after say natural logarithms like tree branches, associating information with emotions or existing social relationships would guarantee a higher memory retention, being located at the core! Compared to if you say a fact is logically true, it has weak associations and not 'known' by the heart.

Well, it could work right? He preached he could memorize bones easily if he treated them like lovers, or associated them with funny, exciting, scary memories. Simple psychological trick that doesn't want to be published. Since then I've invested on a young knight character who goes on fantastic Odysseus-esque adventures saving princesses and (having affairs?),scheming thrones, slaying dragons, becoming king. Codes were much easier to remember after that. I've also come to appreciate science.

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in which Roy does some science! haha, fave/comment/review :)


	3. Chapter 3

I've had dreams lately.

Tiny conversations in my head if my father would have preferred to be romantically cremate or buried into dirt. I met the brahmin again except he had an stub as a leg and head heavy with a thick white turban. It was night and he was here on the road outside the Venus bar for a show, to demonstrate how to walk on bed of hot coals, how to walk on fire.

He closed his eyes and seemed to breathed deeply and performed what people thought impossible. The crowd cheered, and then he called for volunteers.

I raised my hand anxiously and was ushered in along with another volunteer, a young man I didn't know. He went first, removing his shoes, because the brahmin said those things catch fire. I moved closer to the pit, I could feel the heat radiate all over my body slightly suffocating. The other volunteer gingerly stepped into pit with a confident smile the let out a a high scream of agony. It unsettled the crowd and set cold shivers to my spine.

The brahmin asked if I really wanted to do this.

I did. I told him. And he told me to empty my mind , and not walk too slowly so that the coals don't stick to the sole of my foot. He also told me to acknowledge the heat but be unmindful of it also in the dreamed garble that these dreams tend to take. Okay. I walked on the coals, not entirely sure how, but only remembering the sense of triumph reaching the end, pumping my fists to the air and pivoting to meet the crowd. Shell shock really, when I notice that on bed of coals was a blond woman writhing in pain, smelling of burning skin and filling my heart with a dark pit of dread. Just absolute dread. I remembered her face, and it felt odd to feel an overabundance of swelled emotions that I can't feel for my past, my father, that comes so easy to this perfect stranger, as I ran desperately into the coals.

I woke up before I reached her.

It started with little things, I guess. I mispronounced a dignitaries name in a meeting, I forget my luggage at the last train station. And

'Have you been smoking?'

'What. No, Vanessa.'

'You look terrible, you know that?' she tugs at my coat as we walk down the hotel corridor.

'Just met some old xingese acquaintances today. Read past my accent. They say I owe them 1,200,000 cenz' my mind was buzzed and dazed enough to be muttering the truth so casually.

'You do?' she says, shocked.

'my father did' I fumble around for the keys.

'Sounds tricky, what'd you say?'

'Told them to fuck off.' I wasn't in the mood and well it sucks when the past just creeps up on you. Because people remember the clothes you wore yesterday. Just because I go by a different name doesn't mean the world would allow you to forget.

'hmm, doesn't sound like a good idea'. I found the keys and turned the latch, both of staring at the single cabinet door that was cracked open, with the safe. shit. It had to be the day, when I handled transactions, it had to be a day when I was desperate, clouded.

'The bastard took only 1,200,000 cenz flat'

'You're kidding me'

I flip the couches, check through their zippers and check if the wads of money are still there, check the armchair and my luggage. shit.

'Then this -means they won't mess with you right? Thi-this is a good thing, right, Roy?' I was counting the money, the stacks, impulsively, like a routine, I don't even remember what this payment was for, for what transaction. And I couldn't calm my mind, my shaken hands, because I thought I could contain this, I thought I was different now. I was tearing the room down, because I where did, I felt the packet, under the covers. I've wrecked the rooms worse than the thieves, but thank god it's here. I put the roll of paper in my mouth.

'Vanessa, hand me. the lighter' my voice is alien, desperate, gruff.

'now.'

She went about it anxiously. Digging through my stash after I blow a cloud of smoke. 'You're a mess Roy'

'Says the girl who's been drinking all night and bawling her eyes out for a - boy'

She almost retorts.

'Don't judge others because they _sin_ differently than you.'

She relents, silenced. Grabs a roll herself and lights it, squats beside me as I lay, broken on the dirtied floor. The clink of the lighter the only music in the room, her dress had a high cut, and we just held still like that for what felt like ages. I was a mess, and you often have to deal with shit like that when you're trying to change.

'I'll burn the rest of this tomorrow' I said quietly. 'Just don't tell anyone.'

'I'll get pay a prostitute to get you laid if you call madame.' billow of smoke.

'not calling her. yet.' I tilt my head back. 'Besides, you're the one who needs a prostitute, in fact let's save some money and you settle for me.' my head felt heavy, my body suddenly exhausted.

'Roy, you're too broken to be attractive right now.' We laugh at ourselves, the kind when you have dulled senses and feel particularly empty and tired. I curl into a ball and will myself to sleep, her questions hanging dense in the air. I've felt haunted for a long time, now why couldn't didn't I tell anyone.

I came to a sudden realization before I feel asleep: I didn't know how families worked.

It was still dark when I woke up. The air heavy, and Vanessa had gone to pick up some documents before we rode the train from Senna back to Fius. Of course I know we're going to Fius, Vanessa, I remember where the Venus is located, see you at the train station. I probably had a few hours to pack by my-groggy-self,when mr. bellboy, okay bellman gave a ring at the door.

'I'm sorry to bother with you sir, but there are suspicious authorities swarming the hotel lobby right now.'

'Sorry, what?' Oh, they're xingese, right I believe you, now why are you helping me.

The bellboy had a square face and wore a tomato red uniform that colored vividly in the dark. Hmm, I had a good guess and tucked about 20,000 cenz in his pocket. He handed me his red uniform and a cart for my luggage.

I thanked him before I wheeled my money packed luggage into the lift, down the lobby, out the door, all in plain sight. I've paid my dues, and as of that morning, I honestly could swear that I threw away the rest of the opium into the sewers. I wore new clothes, I reflected as if that had some spiritual resonance, new clothes all over again.

I found my way to the train station.


	4. Chapter 4

_Hercules killed the hydra in the second of his twelve works. The hydra of Lerna lived in a swamp, the residence of primal instincts, passions, lusts, desires. Anyone who gets involved with these emotions gets into a swamp in which he drowns. Therefore Hercules shot fiery arrows to get her out of her hiding place. First he cut off the hydra's heads, but they grew back. An energetic approach is not the right way. Then his nephew Joales comes to rescue. He starts to singe the cuts with flaming tree trunks, so new heads cannot be formed. It is a systematically, patient, reflective and profound attitude that is required to permanently cut the hydra's heads. In alchemy, one of the symbols of nigredo is the 'decapitation', and also the 'raven's head' (caput corvi). Those symbols refer to the dying of the common man, the dying of his inner chaos and doubt becfore he is able to find the truth in himself. _

_notes 1/12/1901_

I couldn't look madame in the eyes. I just lost 1,200,000 cenz and I can't even dream of (well, immediately) paying it back. Madame puffed smoke methodically, her large form and sagging cheeks somehow complimenting the elegant long flute where she smoked her tobacco. I don't know how long she sermoned me and Vanessa, or me only particularly of how she always knew it, you arrogant little twit. I'll never get used to silence . She liked those voids where you fill the half finished with your (own voices in your head). Her voice just melts into the drone of the background and I lose track of what was it she's said? It takes time to process.

'We will pretend that those 1,200,000 cenz were spent on your father's funeral.' she says with utmost gravity.

Vanessa holds down her reaction, gapes with her mouth then closes it.

'you have something to say girl?'

she swallows. 'it was a beautiful ceremony.' she mutters.

I look aghast at madame Christmas .

'You don't even mourn over your father's picture.' she says like an insult. 'heck you don't even have a picture.' she stuffs her pipe again and proceeds to light it. 'You're hacking at hydra heads that only grow back.'. you're - she doesn't continue (an idiot). you don't even mourn over your father's picture. you think (those shined shoes are still the same and everything is the same and better when it's not because you died. your previous life died, and you miss him), but you don't _feel_, (because you judge everything and you don't like pity) how could you _expect_ your soul to continue?

She scribbles in her familiar long hand directions to a small border town of Dar es Salaam, near Ishval. It would take at least a week to take that trip, not to mention that that area is currently occupied by the military and in civil war. Well, I was sent on an assignment _to fee_l while crossing a dessert to a small town, and royboy, she states with a dismissive tone. You don't even return until you find something.

Dar es Salaam is not a city, it's not on the map of Amestris. I checked. According to madame Christmas is was midway Giyoir and Ishval, which are both generally in the east, Giyoir being ten stops away by train, a few days ride. Not that it was the first time I've dashed through, Dublith, Metso, Meox in record time, it's just that it was the first time in a long time that I've travelled alone. And I didn't notice it in the cities, only until I was on the border of Giyoir itself with a rented car -talking to officials about my lonely drive to Dar es Salaam did I actually realize it. I showed them my five gallons of spare petrol and five gallon can of drinking water. Only then did they allow me to attempt crossing the wide ho dessert to Dar.

I loved that trip. I loved it, I think, because I had never been in my life totally without sight of another human being for a full day and a night. Few people have, I think. There was only a single narrow strip of hard road to cross the soft sands of dessert, and the total distance was about 200 miles of not a village, not a hut, not a shack or sign of human life over the entire distance. It would take a long time before I'd meet another traveller if my car should break down.

How long exactly, I'd soon find out. After five hours in, my radiator boiled over from the fierce afternoon heat and I had to stop, pop open the car and wait for everything to cool down. After an hour, I was able to flip up the radiator cap and pour some water. It's pointless to drive in this sun for the risk of overheating. Driving in the night with broken headlights wouldn't work either. I'd have to make a mad dash to Dar in the morning, I thought, before my engine's roasted again.

I wished for shade. There was technically shade in the car, but that was like an oven. I wet an extra shirt with tepid water and draped it over my head. That helped. I walked and down the boiling strip of road and gazed in absolute awe of the landscape around me. It was glaring, the hot sky, the great pale sea of sand that wasn't of this world. Dunes in the distance faded in hazes into the still sky. The stillness was overpowering, no voice, no bird, on insect anywhere, feeling godlike in a splendid hot inhuman landscape. I caught sight of a salamander. It caught sight of me, and I'm sure I was the first human it's seen in her life. It disappeared quickly into a burrow, the sun went down, and it became dark almost at once. The drop of temperature was a blessing, and I was wrapped in another alien world, half full of stars and blackness.

This is difficult to describe, but it's like closing your eyes. There's a blackness, but not nothingness. Like watching, or sitting in your subconscious, lightly. I'd copy it's effect, by making a room as dark as possible, and staring at the room seeing nothing, having the feeling my eyes are closed, but they're not. I'd have a feeling where the wall were, but this time in the dessert there was nothing to disrupt the edges of that dark, and you feel very small and infinite at the same time.

I drove the next morning, with first light, and I let the blue plate of sky and sand dash behind me, it felt glorious.


	5. Chapter 5

Looking at the map again, you'd realize that it would take a long journey to reach the ocean, south of Aerugo. I've heard of it's vastness, and I wonder if it's like the dessert.

A child once told me to stay away from coconut trees if I travel to pacific territory. With a strong enough wind, the large brown fruits would give you instant death. Oh you could just die on the edge of the world.

The border of Dar was immediately recognizable by the sudden plantation of arid crops , whose green vegetation looked more like green tinted sand. The fence planks are worn out and broken down and according to the directions that madame gave me the location was about a few leagues left of the end of the road. And right there at the left, the land's crop has razed down. It's a common agricultural practice.

It ensures total clearing of previous ecosystems, and sterilizes up to about two feet of topsoil. A little extremist for me but important when you're planting from a previous maize crop. Even the rotten leaves of that crop would grow more acidic as it decays and would prevent any fertile harvest for the next season. I've never seen such large tracks of land cleared before. And in the middle of it was an old man, that was swarmed by several children like excited kites. As I got closer, I realized through his thick cloak and hunched shoulders that she had red eyes and a brown face. That he was a she, and she was an ishvallan.

Excuse me maam, hello.

She shakes my hand and tells me her name is Rosenda. The children fly around me and off toward the fallen slants of stems that create diagonals that they flitter and dance in.

I asked her if she owned the track of land. She explains to me she wishes to, she has only tended it recently after her cousin died. I say sorry for her loss. After explaining my trip and who I was, she says she doesn't know any christmases.

She shifts as I talk to her, like an ancient animal that have lived off this desert for years. I beg the obvious question: you are refugees yes?

She nods her head and with an old raspy voice she wonders: the war seems to affect us terribly. Though you say you were Xingese, now Amestrian.

'But we both fight for peace, then when all the conflicts are over, which would be over soon: you will be saved and need not hide in the desert.'

She looks at me quizzically, idealistic chump.

'But who will save the Amestrians? you are losing a different war, child.'

(there are other wars?)

(ofcourse there are _other _wars )

I bite my tongue. The heat has loosened my brain: the desert is a holy land to Ishvalan hearts. We use the term deserted but there are other types of poverty, in the same that there are other types of refugees. I wonder what's it like to be a soldier these days. I suddenly realize that I too was hiding from the Amestrian army, hiding from the enlistment. I confide that to Rosenda and suddenly she feels better.

She mentions another Xingese man that was also in hiding from the Amestrian government a few months back. She points me to a rubble where they burnt all their belongings before they were captured in the city to be thrown in the mass grave.

I have somewhere to mourn now: Dar es Salaam.

I ransack the piled wood, and burnt paper trails and find drawers and old scythes with other farming tools. The children join in my 'game' and go through the junk along with me, singing 'what are we looking for ? what are we looking for?' "are we going to find treasure?'. I look through the things I've placed aside: old lamps, some curved planks. What_ was_ I looking for?

'I'm sorry to say but I've pawned anything of value.' Rosenda states.

I skim my black fingers through the coals not processing what she's told me.

'Wait there's something here.'

'Oh that. I did not keep it, since it's religious.'

Her dark hand gingerly held the a small crucifix, deformed and crooked and stained an odd color. I look at her nervously

'keep it child. Just so you have something to bring home.'

I take the small thing in my fingers and garble out a response.

'Thankyou so much.'

Then I said goodbye.

Stamp on a good note of money with a dirty boot and it still has the same worth. Anyone would still take an 10,000 cenz even if it were old torn and broken. The same goes with gold which only melts when exposed to high temperatures. Back in Xing, we used to invest on gold bars rather than diamonds that would turn to black ash when exposed to fire. Diamond ash is the same as normal ash in that it doesn't cost as much as a cen.

The molten crucifix weighed about .75 of an once and could be easily smelted of impurities. Upon close inspection however, the goldsmith's design was a classical one, the type that would be difficult to copy these days and the same kind my father used to wear along with his jade amulets. I'd like to think that I could remove the metal stains without sacrificing it's form. Now what kind of idea was that.

In the slow mornings at the bar, my lab, was turn into a real lab where I'd test all sorts of substances that might possibly remove the stain. My sisters would even take a jab at it, screaming at me that so and so cannot be mixed with this and that because it would corrode the surface. 'That has no scientific basis Clarisse.' 'No, I'm positive it must be true!' I wager a bet and ask a regular civilian alchemist later that night at the busy cool bar if such gold would corrode with so and so. He'd take the molten cross curiously and thank heavens affirm me of my logic. He flips the conundrum in his head have you tried using so and so, and I would nod yes saying I have tried so and so as well as that and that and all it's possible problem is i'm not sure if the stain was previously from acid or base or maybe it was a discoloration of another unknown object placed on top of the cross? a cloth? a metallic thing? My friend praises me for my thoroughness and even entrusts me with a bit of alchemy (which is impossible to learn!) just to get different ideas or maybe a new approach.

Sometimes I'd stare at it in the morning and feel so helpless at that tiny black thing and wonder maybe it is better this way. Maybe it gives my cross character the same way I fondly like the way it's bent over. I'd turn it in the light watch it glint along with my polished rows of drinking glasses. I wonder what would a golden bent cross look like. What would it feel like to have something so seemingly beaten up suddenly reveal itself to the world 'I am gold I am gold!' See me now, if you please kind sir.

My mind was so loose again. I felt like this was my penitence. I've been praying to my father lately, as if he were some demi-god, like the ancestral spirit that we'd hang on walls that were painted with guache oils. I'd say -I'm okay now father, you can rest in peace, now stain just fall of gaddamn it, rest in peace. I've thought about you long enough.

I've come across a text that suggested common lime as a solvent. No fancy percolation and sitting time. It just broke of like caked mud. I yelled at a cleaning from across the room, hey look here! it's crazy - I did it!

I DID IT.

Taste this triumph! thank you! yes. this time, change will stay for good.


	6. Chapter 6

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"I couldn't look madame in the eyes. I just lost 1,200,000 cenz and I can't even dream of (well, immediately) paying it back. Madame puffed smoke methodically, her large form and sagging cheeks somehow complimenting the elegant long flute where she smoked her tobacco. I don't know how long she sermoned me and Vanessa, or me only particularly of how she always knew it, you arrogant little twit.  
I'll never get used to silence . She liked those voids where you fill the half finished with your (own voices in your head). Her voice just melts into the drone of the background and I lose track of what was it she's said? It takes time to process./span/p 


	7. Part two Chapter 7

I've studied alchemy for a couple of months now and they tell me I learn fast. I've figured I must know the rudiments of alchemy before having the face to study under the flame alchemist. My teachers would scoff, ridicule then stand at awe at that mystery of a man that I just happened to mention. He's created that strongest alchemy ever, yet's he's too dull to do anything with it. We haven't heard because he doesn't want to be heard. I've found some leaked notes, it's so heavily ciphered. He's great, they gossip about him as if he were God. I've been scouring all my information leads and I've come to take it as a personal insult from this man that all i know about him is a name.

The man has a name. He goes by the name "Hawkeye" these days.

It's like a whisper I'm chasing through the trains of Faufas to Liore. I've been all over Amestris and it's pissing me off.

I'd draw a circle with chalk and go though my mental catalog of physical phenomena, take note of the materials before and the process to make into an after. I'd clap my hands and grasp the circle and see things transmute in my eyes. It was marvelous really, but it still disturbed me. This wasn't enough, this isn't what I'm looking for.

Where is this Hawkeye?

Hawkeye ! and that was it. I'd flip the name in my head and taste the name on my lips. It didn't sound like a name that belonged to a certain region, and maybe the mismatched locations I've been getting (he's in Kuijec now, really?) means this elusive Hawkeye moves and flies continuously never really belonging anywhere or being anything. I've spent my days now on trains stations, lugging around giant tomes of alchemy books and a single suitcase to distract my mind as I've known , and I'm very sure, I've been going around in circles through these stations, chasing a ghost.

'Who is this hawkeye, and what have I ever done to you?!'

I close my book a little too heavily perking up my neighbor on a station's bench. The clock chimes and the passing crowds have served as a background melting into white noise that didn't seem to disturb him. I've disturbed him, though I wasn't in the mood to be courteous.

'Why the knotted brow sir? '

He was a beggar, with an amputated leg with a white turban. He looked familiar from I don't know where.

I mumble myself a string of curses, really. I said it to myself, barely audible to him: about this impossible Hawkeye flame alchemist who is never really anywhere who might, not even exist, despicable and insulting

'Mm, yes. sir Hawkeye tends to be that way'

I almost choke on my own breath. 'I'm os sorry sir, you know him?'I exclaim. I don't really believe it, it can't be this easy. It can't be like digging through a mine and giving up when you are an inch away from the precious metals. But you chip at the dirt anyway,so I ask out of habit. 'do you know of his current whereabouts, please sir' I beg, embarrassed.

He points his stick to the train, 'he's on that one, coach seven. Look for Elizabeth in the bar.' he says

'the wife?'

He has a hearty laugh. 'no, no, his lovely daughter.'

The train careens as if to taunt me of it's movement. I had no time to think, or even have a good look at this amputated man. Beggars don't hold my eyes like that. I run for the small jutted out steps nearest to the platform and just enough time to grab for the vertical railing. I guess I'll pay for my ticket later. I look back and shout out a thankyou over the insistent carriage guard.

I'll pay later. I said.

I lost sight of the brahmin.

I sit nervously at the far corner of the train bar holding conversation with the barman. 'I've mixed drinks before you have a really good set here'.

He smiles back at me and tells me about his bourbon. I order one and exchange light conversation. He humors me with asking about an Elizabeth.

'Oh she's the golden haired one at that booth.' he points with his eyes, pretending to do something else with his hands. I look at her over and it daunted me entirely.

'Yeah. Elizabeth Hawkeye sounds right.'

It never comes to you in the way you think it would and fate would rather have you off guard. I don't know, there was a fist to my throat in that for the first time ever I would be speechless in sight of a woman. But I was more terrified of losing her, odd thing to think since I don't even have _her _yet, or at all. But this has taken too long -

So I throw myself into the booth with the biggest smiles plastered on my face and say 'Why hellow good afternoon, I'm roy mustang. May i buy you a drink?'

And I could redifine forever my friends, because she barely acknowledges me (though I might be just thinking that?). She freely gets the cold gin( on the table a beautiful auburn color, ice tinkling on the bottom of the glass. my mind darts in my head, I am raw and confused I think. no I'm sure . ..)

'What do you want .. mister Mustang?'

_ '_I'd like to meet your father and learn flame alchemy.'

Her head shoots up with an abrupt but mild interest. Her oval face animating into feigned concern

'Now what would be that for?' I almost hear a tease, and my skin feels hot as if it is attempting to take in too much and so much. and down my drink, and react too surprised at such a question. it was such a surprising question to me.

'I don't know miss. What do they all usually say?'

I looked down at the table but still with her in my periphery. Her lips curved up to the smallest of smiles. She had a beauty to her, and I was being too honest. I've sacrificed to much for this, and I guess I'd be what they'd call at a critical pressure point.

'They usually start with how remarkable they are, then talk about how they could help my father with his flame alchemy.'

'Which is wrong right? because you're father is perfectly fine with his flame alchemy.' I blurt out. She nods. Okay I guess I'm alright.

'So what else could you do for us mister mustang?'

And what started as a supposed catalog of skills lead to a lengthened widened and thorough interview of what really is it that I really know and who I really am and what is the person's worth as a student, and would is value? or purpose? It was more of an interrogation really, but not in the common sense of the word: no coercion to an admission to a fault, just dismantling your words, until it is undressed and you've said to much. I've said to much, and you feel so judged blurting out a personal history to a stranger, though quite nice to sit down with a lengthy conversation for hours on end. I'd like to think that I know her a little though. Know the way she listens, and her unwavering train of thought. The train we were riding itself dashed through the scenery like that day in the dessert. This part of the country is really nice.

'So you still claim you know nothing.'

'Yes but seek knowledge as if I were a disciple forcibly drowned in the ocean grasping for air.'

'That's socrates, the philosopher.'

'I quote him, because I feel the same way as him.'

'Have you dabbled with works on the philosopher's stone?'

'hmm. no.' (That's a different story entirely.)

'But you do deal information at the venus bar, that's what you're referring to knowledge right? You've mentioned profiting from secrets.'

I bite my lip. (I'm so sorry madam). 'but quite frankly miss Hawkeye yes.'

'So that's where the Chris lives?'

'You mean madam Christmas ?'

'I've heard about a Chris in Fios'

'What did you hear?'

'A chris akin to judging you of your sins as the gatekeeper wether you could pass the gates beyond the southern border and finally escape to Aerugo as refugees. She hasn't been doing it for a 7 months now.'

(Well, _I_ haven't been doing it for seven months now. But instead I say) 'oh miss Hawkeye, I've never heard of that tale, it's so romantically put'

Aha, I'm so coy. I was to busy with alchemy these days, I didn't even know I was secretly popular! what a story. She looks at me with full intent.

'I was wondering if you can talk to her for us.'

oh. that.

(There's a reason why I stopped doing this kind of thing. Because you can't pull of that kind of thing anymore and the fuhrer has been crazy so. umm.)

_ '_I'm, let's say, _her direct employee_. But even madame can't guarantee escape, nearly impossible.;

'well mister Mustang, I can't guarantee you'll learn flame alchemy either. _nearly impossible_, but you try anyway.'

right?

for me to learn flame alchemy? I've never thought. of course. I have been so dense. a civilian alchemist who doesn't want to be a militarized state alchemist. He'd want more than anything than escape, and well, it's been impossible for people, let alone awesomely valuable alchemists to go past the border. Hmm. It was so obvious I could hit myself. This flame alchemist was not god I have proof that he is a man.

I finished the last of my drinks that night.

'I'll see what I can do miss. I assure you.'

I wonder if I looked like a knight to her. Though I'm not sure how I could ever do the saving.


	8. Chapter 8

'You seek enlightenment?' (now that does seem like a curious way to put it.)

'What are you running to? what are you running from ?'

I look at this old scraggly man of Berthold and I see little resemblance to the daughter, she's gorgeous.

'does that matter?'

'The greatest conflict you see, is the one inside of you. You need to learn to die and let go before conquering the world.'

'That sounds like Rumi, not alchemy.'

'no. That is still alchemy.' he interjects.

I glance at Elizabeth (she says she is called riza) who is sitting with her mother in the small squared of coach, taking little notice. 'My aunt taught me to never give anything for free, equivalent exchange, now isn't that alchemy?'

'it is.' he continues 'know that my salvation and my alchemy are equally priceless.'

'Salvation is a curious way to put it: You seek salvation? now what exactly are you running from sir ?' it sounds harsh and I sort of regret snapping up to an old man but he claps his hands in a sweeping gesture in the high air.

'Now we're talking, mr. Mustang, now we're talking.' he glances at his daughter with the slightest hint of approval. I have no idea what I got into.

Master Berthold, as I've come to call him, is admittedly an unorthodox type of alchemist. I don't intend to bore you with too much detail, we covered a great deal of studies. But they're important. And the first instruction, 'the most elementary part', consists of having to practice the most difficult physical exercises, all of them concerned with muscle control and breathing.

Breathing? what. really.

Some practitioners of yoga, can claim to levitate 6 inches from their mats, others see even when completely blindfolded, and others walk on fire. Now fire? Okay this piques my interest, I didn't seem impatient so I'll just go ahead and ask.

'Isn't it that alchemists need only the mental capacity to activate and advance alchemical circles? A mental understanding of physical nature, faculties and not necessarily physical cap-pa-bi-lity?'

Okay I was wrong, master Berthold was the impatient one.

'if you develop control of your body, then the control of your mind will be an automatic thing. you need exercises to develop your conscious mind.'

'_Conscious_ mind ? Why do you say _conscious_ mind ?'

'Because each man has two minds, the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious mind is highly concentrated, potent. While the conscious mind, the one we use, is a scattered, unconcentrated thing. It is concerning itself with a thousand of different items, the things you see and the things thinking about. So you must learn to concentrate on one thing and one thing only, and practitioners usually deal with the breath.' he points me to a cupboard with a candle and matches and advises me to keep a candle flame perfectly aligned with my eyes, a foot away and to stare at it observing the different part of the fire.

'right away sir'

he disappears behind the door of his flat, his family were unpacking, mostly his things, these endless piles of papers and books. They were always moving as I guessed, and I've earned money in my travels to afford a flat nearby for my training. He seemed to busy to be bothered for more questions. The candle was on the cupboard, so I decided I might as well.

Roy sat quite still and stared in the candle flame. The flame, when you looked at it closely had three separate parts. The was the yellow outside, then there was this massive inner sheath. And right in the middle was the tiny magic area of absolute blackness. He stared at this tiny black are. He focused his eyes upon in and kept staring at it, and as he did so, his mind went absolutely blank, his brain ceased fidgeting around, and all at once it felt as though he himself, his whole body, was actually encased within the flame, sitting snug and cozy within the little black area of nothingness. It was like staring into a dark room again, or that dark desert.

With no trouble at all, roy listened to the sound of his breath. He concentrated on the breath and nothing but the breath. He felt the nerve between his eyes loosen and rest: He blocked out all other thoughts. He succeeded completely in doing this, but only for about fifteen seconds. After that, hid mind began to wander and he found himself thinking about flame alchemy and how consumingly spectacular it would be. At this point, he tore away from the candle.

'harder than I thought' He would be very patient working on the meditation everyday. Soon enough master Hawkeye gave him other exercises to gain control of his body, completely unrelated to the art of conscious mind quieting. It bordered on sparring, and it was entirely confusing, especially that it was very martial, combative

'Sir, I thought that you hated combat alchemists, you never took up being a state alchemist, why do I have to learn to fight? I always thought there were more diplomatic ways of dealing with things.' He says I talk too much.

'This is not fighting, you are protecting yourself.' he says. 'I know you've dealt with secrets before: but the secret of flame alchemy is one that is completely volatile, desired by the military. And your mother doesn't grow hair in her nostrils without the military knowing it.'

right.

I concede and add strength training to my daily meditation regimen, and force myself to stick to the new habit. as weeks passed, i would be rewarded and would be able to stare at blackness for a full two minutes with a calmer mind. My lanked frame has also added mass, and through minute changes I'd realize I've grown out my clothes. But it still didn't amount to much. Master Hawkeye still wouldn't allow me to look at his flame research and by the rate of miss Hawkeye ignoring me I continually wonder if any change is impressive. My mind was scattering again, so I focus back on the books. Master Hawkeye has been instructing me to read all these tomes related to the symbologies and histories commonly associated with fire. It's time I go over them.

_In Hinduism, yajña (Sanskrit: यज्ञ) or yagam (Tamil: யாகம்), is a ritual of offerings accompanied by chanting of Vedic mantras, a practice from ancient times. It is essentially a ritual of offering and sublimating the havana sámagri (herbal preparations) in the fire. An essential element is the ritual fire – the divine Agni – into which oblations are poured, as everything that is offered into the fire is believed to reach God._

_notes 07/21/1901_

_The Liber Ignium ad Comburendos Hostes (On the Use of Fire to Conflagrate the Enemy, or Book of Fires for the Burning of Enemies, and abbreviated as Book of Fires) is a medieval collection of recipes for incendiary weapons, including Greek fire and gunpowder_

_ One of the most influential studies of the Liber Ignium was conducted by Marcellin Berthelot; it is still cited in 20th century works on the topic._

_ The Liber Ignium is a collection of 35 recipes without any internal classification, as it was typical of "secret recipe" list of the these, fourteen are related to warfare, eleven with lamps and lights, six with the prevention and treatment of burns, and four with the preparation of chemicals, chiefly saltpetre. Some recipes were found to be worthless._

_ Recipe no. 14 contains advice for the harvesting and processing of saltpeter. In Berthelot's interpretation, it says: "saltpeter is a mineral of the earth, and is found as an efflorescence on stones. This earth is dissolved in boiling water, then purified and passed through a filter. It is boiled for a day and a night and solidified, so that transparent plates of the salt are found at the bottom of the vessel."Furthermore, there are four recipes (nos. 12, 13, 32, and 33) that describe mixtures resembling gunpowder_

_notes 07/22/1901_


	9. Chapter 9

Master Berthold was a busy man,being assigned by a civil extension for odd alchemical jobs such as vast repairs and certain tracks of study. It was a curious thing to watch him, he seemed to enjoy his job. They recognized him as a good alchemist but never realized he was the famed flame one. After a few weeks we rode a train to the neighboring town of Ermutixso, (finally the south!) that had phone lines that reached to Fios. You see during these times phones didn't reach very far, and it was difficult to get a hold of someone.

I had a long talk with madame Christmas.

She was happy I finally found the ghost, but what I was asking of her was impossible you foolish child. If Master Berthold was so well versed in alchemy (and even combat!) he could simply disappear if he wanted to.

'But he hasn't, that's the thing.' It's like he wants do desperately a safety net for escape, but loves Amestris too much to abandon it.

'Or he really wants a protege. Though if I had a daughter, I wouldn't let her learn flame alchemy either'. dangerous huh?

'you let me learn flame alchemy.'

'you're not a girl royboy.'

We talk about lighter news, like what the girls have been upto.

'You've been away for a while. Even if I find information on that Berthold I wouldn't even know where to call.'

'Well I think i'll figure it out on my own'

'good luck.'

The dial tone is familiar, I put down the phone. I couldn't really bring myself to admit I've missed them

_notes 08/03/1901_

_Symbolic representation of alchemical works were not entirely for the purpose of creating ciphers or secret code. Some works are even written in vernacular verse (one in particular, in a local laguage of the lower region of rhine) was entitled introduction to alchemy, by an author who identifies himself as Gratheus. He gave names to vessels such as bima, alpha, fumera which have mnemonic function similar to how stars are given faces for easier recollection. _

_During this era of alchemical work(second half of the fourteenth century), there was a literary tradition that varied widely but usually made use of personified substances that had specific roles, acting in violent amorous and wary dramas. Gratheus even assimilated story-lines from greek to arab regions showing the long historical traditions of alchemy._

_Some of the iconic works are 'Zosimos' Dream Vision' that had typical personifications of metals being dismembered or amputated representing nigredo. Another, entitled 'Ibn Umails tabula chemica' describes the courtship and the wedding of the sun and moon. This theme reappears, recurs and reincarnated in late mediaeval alchemy (14th century) as the main dramatis personae of a red king and white queen named Ylarius and Virgo._

_In connexion with these texts, pictorial representation relates observable objects, 'ex signis et effectibus' (of that which is observed) and conceptual schemes. Apparatus such as furnaces and vessels are typically sketched in the most literal sense while observable phenomena are visualized either with geometric diagrams or literary similes._

These representations would sometimes would stretch to great epics about a black koi and long lines of twin kings reclaiming distant thrones. The characters would then get lost in a thick of wood tasked to tame a lion, a crane, sometimes a doe. It's mildly amusing , and the rich traditions of hand drawn illuminations of texts with dancing colors , thick language, it feel like of another world, infinitely times older than you and shockingly weird. What does this vastly adored red king do with the physical nature of flame, combustion, thermokhymystry?

'Master Hawkeye, I really don't see the connection. These are fables, effective metaphors in older alchemical discourse and nothing more. Modern alchemists only recycle the symbols because the tales have effective cryptic codes. Nothing more.'

'Is that so mr mustang?' He's tinkering with a small apparatus, a metal cylinder that seems to be a piston. He's humming, the damn bastard oblivious with my frustrations. It's been weeks (weeks!) that I've done nothing but read, go through my routine, research on our deal, and not even once learn a new alchemical diagram, and here he was his back turned away bent over humming at a tiny piston. The nerve.

'Are you sure that's all?'

'Yes that was all master Hawkeye'. I'm staring at the mountains of research that I've had to learn latin for, these mystic tales, that were pulled from the annals of history. 'Read absolutely all of it.' I say exasperated.

'Then you'll have to read it again.'

I haven't talked about Riza. I haven't really spoke to her since my long confession on the train. I've only really called her miss Hawkeye out of courtesy. I was constantly hounded by the research, or the deal, or knocked out winded with physical training that I've never really got the chance to talk to her. she seemed to be this star that was omnipresent in the lab, in the house, in the flat, but utterly thousands of miles away.

I'd finally worked with metals now, working with master Hawkeye on some clunky set-up, with him drudgingly admitting I have a few good ideas and that an extra pair of hands does help. I'll catch sight of her in passing, wordlessly in the lab arranging test tubes, with the clink of beakers and funnels. I wanted to know her in a sense that she reminded me of my sisters, or the family I confided to, full of women just about her age. Then her father will ask her to go off now and take of mother, and she'd just slip away. Then I'd probably fall asleep in her father's study, or she'd deftly bandage a burnt arm, or I'd be nose deep in work again I'd never catch a glimpse of her.

She disturbed me, that mystery.

* * *

notes: roy's geeky notes are historically true ;) historical alchemy had a lot of couples, always thought of it in a royai way :)


	10. Chapter 10

I've been going through greek mythology and I tell you Heracles (or Hercules as the roman form) has a fascinating story. I've since looked him up when Madame mentioned his slicing of the hydra head. I like him. A perfect example of a syncretizaion of cultures and reinterpretations, have gone through enough hardship with sincerity o illicit empathy and had the strength to be a hero. notes!

"According to the sophist Prodicus, he was visited here by the nymphs Pleasure and Virtue who offered him a choice of two lives: either comfortable and easy or glorious and brutal. Heracles chose to suffer to achieve great glory." Okay now.,

Heracles' first wife was Megara, with whom he had several children. However, Hera caused Heracles to lose his mind and kill his wife and children in a frenzy. Heracles then asked the oracle what to do to atone for his sins, which lead him to the famed twelve labors. Interestingly enough some mix Psyche and Hera together. Psyche ,Ψυχή meaning soul and if this line of thought were to be followed - it wasn't a jealous god who drove Heracles mad, (making him innocent). It was his psyche/soul that destroyed his life. It was Hercules himself who made him lose his own mind. So it is our soul that destroys us? to redeem ourselves afterwards? Or are women always painted terrible in history?

Psyche is commonly depicted with butterfly wings, metamorphosys. Geometric representation of metamorpheses in alchemical graphs mimics these wings in this fashion:

\ / \ /

\ / \ /

/ \ / \

/_\/_\

_Alchemical texts like to refer to soul/psyche as mercury, a grey liquid metal. it's commonly called Quicksilver though to suggest it's nature. It's a metal that behaves like a liquid representing the impermanent, shifting nature of our souls, calm quiet and forgiving to its container. Alchemy's root words initially mean the study of mercury. Another metal prized by alchemy is sulfur,(mercury's dua) a metal of passion, with a pungent smell and highly combustible. Reminds me of Hercules, and reading on Psyche, she sounds like quicksilver too. A distinct combinations and processys of the two (the sun and the moon, king and queen) are said to be the ingredients of the philosopher's stone. You know, a meeting of paradoxical opposites. The most mythical of great works or magnum opus._

_notes 08/05/1901_

I haven't figured out what exactly it was that master Berthold did when attending to his job as a civilian alchemist. One day I asked him and he pointed at the sink that could run no water.

'They asked me to fix it'

'You're a plumber'

'Rock, impeding their water system of the whole city, careful precise alchemy needed to salvage the town's economy in record time. They called me.'

'Alright'

He left quietly. Later afternoon, I ran the water at the tap, and watched it flow tip tap to the drain. Hmm, so this was what master did for a "living".

Another interesting greek story is that of prometheus a demigod and titan, which reminds me of ironically master Hawkeye. When Zeus hid fire away from man, Prometheus stole it by trickery and returned it to earth. As punishment Zeus chained him to a rock where an eagle fed each day on his liver, which grew again each night, damning him to eternal suffering; he was rescued by Hercules.

_Greek fire was an incendiary weapon used by the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. The Byzantines typically used it in naval battles to great effect as it could continue burning while floating on water. It provided a technological advantage, and was responsible for many key Byzantine military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from two Arab sieges, thus securing the Empire's survival._

_The information available on Greek fire is exclusively indirect, based on references in the Byzantine military manuals and a number of secondary historical sources such as Anna Komnene and Western European chroniclers, which are often inaccurate. In her Alexiad, Anna Komnene provides a description of an incendiary weapon, ...often regarded as an at least partial "recipe" for Greek fire:_

_This fire is made by the following arts. From the pine and the certain such evergreen trees inflammable resin is collected. This is rubbed with sulfur and put into tubes of reed, and is blown by men using it with violent and continuous breath. Then in this manner it meets the fire on the tip and catches light and falls like a fiery whirlwind on the faces of the enemies._

_Constantine Porphyrogennetos' warnings show, the ingredients and the processes of manufacture and deployment of Greek fire were carefully guarded military secrets._

_notes 12/15/1901_

I've come on at civil organization structures with a vengeance. I've spared you the grudging details but I was hitting a wall. I couldn't figure out how to get the Hawkeyes out, and I don't know why the Master Hawkeye disliked all of my plans. I was coming into terms that I couldn't do this, and after master Hawkeye has not taught me flame alchemy for an entire year I was feeling pretty desperate.

Entirely stupid.

I thought that mrs. Hawkeye knew it, she was plastered on the bed weak and sickly so I thought she would be easy to break. I scared her, out of all things. But she didn't know where dear Berthold's research was.

I felt guilty afterwards. Mrs. Hawkeye was the type of woman who would still fix her hair because she wanted to look a little better for her beloved husband. She didn't deserve me scaring her like that, and I felt pitiful and useless. I sulked in the corner all by myself.

Master Hawkeye allegedly named himself Berthold a few years back. Understandably so, after Pierre Berthelot.

_Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot (25 October 1827) was a f_rench khemyst with a scientific commission on thermodynamics research for applications on the franco prussian war. He pioneered the fields on saltpeter extraction , and nitrogen compounds. Notable are his studies on mechanisms of explosions, how slow flames can have abrupt accelerations under pressure, and subjected to gaseous mixtures. He coined the term shock wave, a rapid wave, followed by exothermic reaction that provides energy to sustain the velocity. This is historically known as detonation wave. hmmm. Pierre Berthelot was adamant to the press that his explosives research would have peacetime applications.

great. peacetime applications.

* * *

notes: yes, that cipher for wings/metamorpheses is pretty familiar, go check the tattoo now geeks I didn't make that up ;)


	11. Chapter 11

Berthold Hawkeye, his wife, daughter and protege have been settled in the city of Faufas, a hostile border in the west, for two months. He was tasked for the fist time on a militant commission though this one was an exception. It was for building a giant wall, and it took about two months for the two (Hawkeye and Mustang) to lay down the right amount of materials of the wall at the key axis points of the giant transmutation circle. Berthold was keen on finishing early to slip away before war erupted (again) and be forced to face with a situation where he'd use his alchemy, or his conscience.

But the neighboring city of Albupow had a trade block, then hostilities. That was the only city line back to Central. When Hawkeye activated the giant walls for Faufas, he has sentenced his life in the second most hostile border (that's after Ishval). It would be a miracle for Mustang to push through with his deal. There was no escape, they built the wall themselves

Berthold was standing in the public market a few kilometers away from the last train out of the city. It was while holding a basket-full of groceries that he was ambushed by the state in blue clad uniforms with gruff faces and mean looks.

'You're under arrest! Hawkeye!'

His face is punched into the floor making him taste dirt through broken glasses. Berthold inwardly wonders if the government is finally going to force him to give his flame alchemy, that two months was too long to stay in one place

'We know what you've hidden. Now you think you're so smart.'

His face was raised up with the man's gruff hands pulling his hair.

'You were hiding an opium cartel, a multiple offense fugitive , the xingese black for almost a span of a year!'

Berthold's mind draws a blank. xingese bla- excuse me?

'You will be imprisoned, to rot in the darkest jail in the whole of Amestirs, Cental Area's Paumis! And don't think you're wife got away with it, she's strewn packed into the last train last train out of here.'

Central huh? the most impenetrable location from Amestrian borders. A stroke of luck . damn no. no this was not what I bargained for kid. Can't get me out, so you put me in Central?!The blue men stuff Berthold into a staete car and his legs are wrangled stuffy and nervous drained from blood.

This was not what I bargained for mustang. This was not the deal.

Heracles is commonly portrayed wearing a lion's head, a tribute he won after slaying the nimean lion as his first labor. The nimean lion supposedly represented animal passions. When Heracles donned it on his head afterwards, he was able to see through the eyes of his previous passions, but still bear the lion's body on his back. this is why this must be the first labor.

Mister mustang dashed through the cobbled streets quickly, losing himself in the sea of people, of panicked people anxious about finding family or finding a way over walls to get to the train tracks, somehow.

He finds a most unlikely person.

'MISS Hawkeye?! You're supposed to be on the train.'

She slapped him on the face.

'You incarcerated my father!'

'It was the only way miss Hawkeye. (if it not be so obvious). I think I've given sufficient evidence for him to be bailed out. He'll get out. I assure you.'

Her eyes are squinched. 'that was-'

'effective. it was effective.'

(except the part where he doesn't know how he'll save himself. let alone even hide in this tiny town of Faufas undetected, when it's bursting with these mad cretans. god, he wasn't a soldier)

An explosion from afar, gun shots overhead. Miss Hawkeye trips Roy to the floor and wield out a gun to their defense. These people are innocent, why are they shooting? a handgun of all things! She deftly shoots back at hostiles, aiming oddly at their legs.

'let's get out of here, sir'

'alright'

I guess she has experience with the saving. We pass through broad walks and alleys and through shadows and light, with the panic in the distance. We meet dead ends, and I sketched rapid circles. There was a riot of people flooding the Faufas that was gleaming new, near the trains, people were being trampled and suffocated by the pressure of crowds. They could hear people crying. The don't even remember how this started.

Mustang squeezed through the pack (holding unto her wrist) enough to approach a wall section that seemed to be e weaker point (he couldn't remember the design). He drew a big enough circle, a big wide one that could fit people. He activated the circled, it glowed, cracked but failed.

Shit. He rapidly countered, through the hails of people pounding behind him. He drew another circle, he helped build this wall he could punch a hole through. He did. And it crashed loud clear, asunder and he was almost trampled by the flood of people passing through. Miss Hawkeye buoyed him out held him close.

'Maybe this would stop it,' he said pointing at the waves of people.'if enough loading bay gets too crowded or they block the tracks they couldn't possibly operate the trains. they'd have to negotiate-'

A blue flash appears large and dangerous, an explosion unlike any the Roy has seen before. Through the smoke he sees all the wounded civilians it hit, crying weeping in the rubble as a man in a white suit with a long ponytail appears from chaos. His head is hig, so this is a state alchemist, thought Roy.

I'm Kimblee, the man in white waved to the crowd. He ordered the people to shut the damn up. Roy eyes the alchemic rune on Kimblee's hand an eye, that shoots apparently some form of electricity. There's a pressed tension in this crowd. He's heard of this Kimblee, hey say he has a philosopher's stone. Roy has good taste to mimic the technique, finds a white glove on him and sketch a rune pattern that would work on train station's floor.

'No one passes me!' Kimblee shouts. He yabs about being pissed with this nuisance shows no remorse for the people he's hurt. I can easily do this to all of you. No one, will follow is.

Roy thought: what the hell am I doing.

WAIT!

Kimblee shoots a glare at Roy, and with overbearing stares from the population of Faufas, Roy raises his hands up, weaving his way through the rest of the distance between him and Kimblee.

'I-' Kimblee kicks at Roy's knees and shoots his arms into a headlock. Roy swoops down and activates a circle at hi feet. It sinks Kimblee's feet into the ground, he lets out a yelp.

'You NEED alchemists right?' Roy shouts. Kimblee twists harder into the lock, shooting pain through Mustang's arms, up his neck, like a knife.

'You need c-combat alchemists right?' Roy repeats.

Kimblee keeps his glare at Roy's eyes, Roy had his foot and weight on the state alchemist's ankle. The military man eyes was wincing in pain, if this was a battle of will then.

'Get me on that train with her.' Roy begs shouts, points at Riza with his eyes, who was now precariously close, gun ready in her hands.

'We don't need soft soldiers kid' Kimblee hisses.

Roy jerks his body unto the ankle and Kimblee is rendered shocked with pain. Mustang wrestles out of the lock, and slams Kimblee to the floor.

'But your fuhrer needs recruits mr. state alchemist. and I'm pretty damn good.'

Kimblee laughs, a little hysterical. 'so be it.'

Arriving at the train station, I felt relief. I finally did it, I saved them. Sort of.

I whipped around behind me to the giant crowd of the platforms. My arm gripped at nothing. I lost her.

* * *

-end of part two-


	12. Part Three Chapter 12

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"It's been hell working for the military. Just like the required ironed blue garbs and the stiff combat boots. (Where the left always took three times longer to remove than the right. It was another world,  
but I knew how to follow rules. And for all the puff these men had,  
they were still men. Who had egos, who like the the shiny metals they'd stab on their chest collars. Who had souls beyond what was written on the protocols.)/span/p 


	13. Chapter 13

'You Roy boy! are absolutely no fun' my sisters easily accused me. Colored drinks crowded our table, and the drunken stupor made my head feel both light and heavy. It's no fun Roy boy to drink self-blame for the death of a mentor, a father; No fun lest his caution about your pride be Ru-ight! and your 'wish to protect Amestris' be a lie -or hypocrisy! They looked at each other and laughed. It's no fun you're no fun, when no less than miss Elizabeth (your mentor's daughter!) is right beside you. They're distraught by our formality ,'how awful!just awful!' and jammed me to her side. You should at least be friends! They taunt and I don't feel anything but this numbness. I have the research. He died. He died.

'Do it Roy!'

They announce screaming too loud, and fuss around the booth.

'Do what exactly Vanessa?' Me being bullied was thankfully amusing for miss Hawkeye. 'The four surefire questions that would get Roy –absolutely any woman.' There were loud guffaws and outright demand for my live demonstration. They were so noisy. I feigned reluctance; but to my surprise miss Hawkeye asked to see it. whu-?! uh.

Eghm ehm. Okay.

I cleared my throat and draped my arm across her shoulders, putting my drunk face in close intimacy with her round brown eyes. 'Elizabeth' I mustered what allure my miserable heart left.

'Do you have a boyfriend?.' She says no, with a smile. The audience reeled, I fixed my collar, I made a face that meant we were in business. 'Well now'. I used in my smiling voice. Yeah. that's what my sisters called it: my smiling voice when my voice smiled even when my face was in an heir of formality. It is difficult to ignore my smiling voice, my golden persuasion and so I used it now, this damned charisma. I asked the next question

'Do you find men in uniforms.' I sweep my hand dramatically across my torso. 'Attractive?' My sisters kicked the seats. Miss Hawkeye is finding it hard to contain her laughter.

' Uhm, no mister mustang, uniforms are not my thing.'

' Do you find me attractive?' I quickly countered.

'Wait what.' I hold her gaze.

'Maybe.' I raised my fists; me and my sisters knew entertainment. And the ruckus they made was almost enough to wipe away my grief good lord, 'The last question Roy the last!'

'Do you care, my Elizabeth, if I decipher you father's research?'

'No mr. mustang, I don't really care one bit.'

It was an honest question and an honest answer and not a pretty thought, it diffused the momentum and my sisters cried coward, that's not fair! not part of the game, put back your arm over her shoulders, you're supposed to go through with thi-

'Wait, mr. Mustang what was the real fourth question?' As if it were of any significance miss Hawkeye. I think to myself. But if it pleases you:

"I'm supposed to say 'can I kiss you right now?' then I do this". I leaned over and kissed her on the lips with no mock intimacy that was required for the usual surefire skit. She kissed back, it lasted longer than expected. and wow.

I said sorry, tore my hands away from her, then blamed the alcohol really.

I reminded her to contact me when I dropped her off back to the empty house.

But you're not obliged to help me mister mustang her voice says. I don't want your pity, her eyes whisper. She insists that it's been the nth time that I get off her corridor her building that I get away.

I said I wasn't on her corridor: I was on her fucking welcoming mat.

(That would be funny later on.)

She snarled in frustration, and slammed the door to my face. at least tried to when i lodged my foot through the doorway (hey I get it you strong stubborn woman. It's inevitable that I'll be leaving you alone, I'm assigned in the camp for crying out loud and you are so rude and stubborn and sad and I'm just as confused of how the hell I'll ever take care of you in an inconspicuous way with your dad's voice in my head)

I grip the door open.

'You're a dog person. right? You like them?'

She eyed me quizzically looking for something to snap back with.

'Okay perfect. Get yourself a dog and I'll stop pestering you.'

Then I did close the door, and I did leave her alone because that's what she wanted and I know that's what I wanted when my father died. I wanted to be alone and not alone all at once and all at the same time, it was like a zen paradox. It's a sound of one hand clapping. You don't know what it is you want but it's the sound of one hand clapping.

She named it black Hayate, the dog I mean.

She doesn't admit it but after that incident, I feel I earned a bit of her faith.

She loved that dog.

They tease me in camp. I don't think anyone knew how to treat alchemists anymore. We were just too awkward and bookish and mildly terrifying with the media circus. Even worse, news spread that I was working on an important research and I shouldn't be disturbed. (ha!) "working" on that research! no that research was dragging on my knees, forcing me to kneel on pits of pebbles through miles of penitence. That thing was as incomprehensible as a brick and working on it was like fighting a void. and maybe I looked a little delusional with dark circles under my eyes that day when they didn't know if they could throw me into the camp's fountain. Oh yeah, I was bumped up as a commanding officer, and it's tradition to get thrown into dirty fountains to make your new uniform look older. It was custom I had it coming.

Especially when a bunch of some higher years, suddenly flanked me on both sides, with these apprehensive faces. It was the cold months and the wind felt harsh and that fountain throwing tradition didn't sound fun. I didn't know if I should fight back.

'Officer Hughes had a brilliant idea, plebe.'

They were circled around me now and I thought 'I'm ready. yes, I could swim'.

'You're studying flame alchemy right?'

'umm, sir yes sir. But I can only produce heat right now, no fire, senior officer sir.'

'You should heat that fountain. Make us a huge sauna. We'll strip naked and pretend it's a giant hot spring.' A hot spring in the fort? hah.A smile breaks into my face before I force it down, that does sound like a good idea. maes, that genius.

'sir gladly sir!' i saluted him, and drew alchemy circles with chalk on the giant fountain on the center of the fort. We had a fun time, and restful bath. I was later charged for vandalism, but since then, the senior officers always had my best interests in mind.

* * *

Yes, in my head canon there existed a way that Roy had indirectly given her Black Hayate :) And of course Maes is in this fic :))


	14. Chapter 14

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"I was helping miss Riza move into the central I've mentioned before, it was the safest place to be (away from borders etc.) but she seemed to only set her heart in the ironically and frustratingly most dangerous job she could get. She needed to do some investigations on her parent's death. She'd be a reporter./span/p 


	15. Chapter 15

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"Roy is wearing the lion's head. He can see the same grief that strikes him when she drowns herself in work. He didn't know she was such an actress. Like quicksilver assuming the role of mother, of a perfectly fine reporter, or someone who is just fine mister Mustang.  
She makes time to visit that hospital to only have a more realistic image play in her mind, a winded up image of how her mother would have could have did have died and if there be any logical explanation for it. /span/p 


	16. Chapter 16

It didn't take too long to go through hospital records and find out that her mother died of leukemia and that her father died of tuberculosis. She didn't have to be a reporter actually, but I didn't have the heart to point it out.

They said it could've been exacerbated (a fancy clinical term for 'worse') by father didn't smoke (But he was the flame alchemist. And she'd recall the noxious fumes that he'd lived in all his days in laboratory, that could've possibly killed him. Killed by his own magnum opus, terrific.)

'Well, that was the way of life.' she said. She confessed that she was expecting some form of foul play, that it was the government who killed her father not God. Some kind of event that needed further research and investigation.

But it was God.

The doctors assured her: very obvious from the cadaver.

Well then. She didn't have to chase any ghosts now, I visibly saw a weight lift from her shoulder, she told me she feels better now. I imagine that only Hayate would see her weep.

Maes has been bothering me. Our room was small and womb like and this was one of those times when we were tired and so tired about everything that are minds refused to function and we brought up the most absurd things. Suddenly he shoots up from the upper bunk and hits my head with his gracious foot. Imagine his voice fill the room, my fingers numb on the flood of papers draping my desk.

'I've found an amazing thing.'

'What's that Maes?'

I hear the metal springs groan at the shift of his weight, his hands find a table lamp strapped to one of the posts.

'I've found a story.' Here was Maes again with his love stories.

'no no listen come on on Roy. This time it's about a alchemist. It's bloody difficult to find one okay so. um .' he trails

'but what?'

I look up and feel his figure still above the straight bed, just staring at papers he held under a lamplight. He uses his senior voice now: 'This is not you.' he said. 'This is not you alright. But you should hear it anyway; here's the summary.' I stared into a void. I let his voice fill the room.

_the protagonist of Hawthornes short story the birthmark(1845) is a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy.. he had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful women to become his wife(hawthorne 1987,p.175). the protagonist then becomes obsessed with perfection and determines to remove his wife's one tiny blemish a birthmark on her lip, a symbol of inescapable imperfection of the human condition. the elixir vitae he persuades her to drink in order to remove the mark; kills her..._

_notes 04/21/1903_

silence greets the room.

'You know what , this was a terrible idea. I could write a better story than this' Maes says tactfully flipping the his lamp off. Well Maes, I guess I don't have much to live upto by the standards of alchemical love stories.

Roy meets the amputated brahmin with a white topee again in his dreams. Roy does nothing but stare into the flaming pit. It feels like days pass by just that incessant sound of cracklingcrk crack. He wakes up, sweating, not having moved an inch.

Miss Hawkeye is such a mother, behind the stoic face she was this bastion that the mismatched staff of the press office held onto. Because she'd perk up and say. We can finish this or we'll publish that if we say it in this way as so and so. Being with her you almost felt unafraid. The press was becoming a very muddy business these days and one had to be careful with every word, every letter. They needed some crazy break.

I was flattered to be invited. We absolutely doted on miss Hawkeye on her birthday. yes, unimaginable but there were birthdays during wars. The dress was magnificent. She didn't need it, but we needed it, we needed colored cake and louder music and I'm slightly jealous of all this male staff that I'm painfully made aware of. I was glad I brought drinks and I did mix them a whole lot of drinks. I had the sober guts to kiss her hand with this impish smile and I gave her a kaleidoscope as a gift. It had rocks in that looked like dulled glass, that would filter things this way and that when you turned it and everything. 'It's like the glass rocks in the sugarmill, in Duazu the time when you helped me with...' I trailed off. She gave me a look that told me I didn't have to finish explaining. Because this was a special kind of thing the two of us had that would be difficult to say out loud. The celebration felt warm and nice, and even Maes would tease me for going home so early.

'Well Hughes. You can't dance into the night when there's curfew.'

'then damn the Fuhrer.' he whispers.

Roy has met Gracia.

Of course he's met Gracia, if it be the last thing that Maes Hughes does before he goes to war. You have to meet Gracia, his small courteous wife who is so ineffably kind. After that I had it lying to Maes, I had it with him assuming that Clarice, or Amanda or heck even think that Vanessa be the woman of my life every time they drop by the base to say hello, we've been in training together for three years now.

'I'll admit it okay, Hughes: They're my sisters, I'm an intelligence officer. They work at a brothel as a cover. I'm not in a relationship with any of them.'

The words sink through his head like stone.

'mm. so I was always right.'

'no you are never right.'

'it's that i-hate-the-military-chick right?'

'the who?'

'The girl you're previous master left behind. You look at those research papers as if you're thinking of a girl. It's her!' his eyes grow wider now. 'I knew it!' he leaps around like the child boisterous in the seat, I can't believe I've let him drive. I wholly regret this. he doesn't laugh, he doesn't mock: it's odd because he's in this genuine excitement and sheer happiness I just so wanted to hit him. or just do something cruel to him. He stops talking for a second only to smile at me mockingly, and instead asks me about my sisters my crazy secret life. It was his gesture of kindness to ignore momentarily his giddy triumph.

'Okay, okay. I'll ask about her_ later_.'

* * *

notes: Roy's notes aren't made up. You could google 'em if you like, old alchemy's fascinating :)


	17. Chapter 17

A few weeks later I thought he had completely forgotten the whole affair but Maes brings it up when our bunk room was dark. When we talked about things in the dark, as if you're talking inside a pitch dark desert, we had this unspoken agreement that what we were talking about it serious.

'Your sisters are beautiful.' he says flatly into the air. In the dry conventional sense oh they quite are the sumptuous things. But then it begs the question:

'I wonder what's beauty to you.'

I stared into the darkness tossing the thought around in my head. I squeeze my eyes hard and prolong a blink. _what do you see in her ? _it begged. She's, she's just so _broken, _visiting hospitals? shooting guns? I'm quite popular enough to-

'my sisters. are these exotic shimmering cuts of crystal' -no that wouldn't do.

'it pulls at men like children to candy. yes children see things perfectly. colorful wrappers, really sweet.'

'while miss Hawkeye...'(I can't believe I've finally said it out loud. I gulp my dry throat.) with ms Hawkeye, people see a plain face that is fine but get intimidated with her being. A war in her, full of broken things that is too ugly and dark for things called love.

'but it's she's like this child's first 'Real' toy. a kid's little friend a ragged old bear.'

'a metaphor mustang really?'

'shut up.'

'It takes a lot of time to be real you know. that's why it doesn't often happen to toys that break easily or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time a toy's Real, most of the hair has been loved off, and the eyes drop out and they get loose in the joints and very these things don't matter to a child at all, because once a toy's Real it can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. But children understand, and this toy has gone through the world with them, and the toy is real and beautiful that way. No need for features, or colorful wrappers.

(She's real. And it consumes me completely)

Do you get that hughes? (Could you please get that hughes because I want at least one other person to know it if she doesn't know. Because I want another human being to know this and feel this and please god. Help me.)

'She's like the inanimate bear that's breathed to life?'

'I used to just crush on her from a distance okay. The real her just mocks all imagination.'

elixirs of youth sell well. always. even from fakes.

always looking for this secret

this secret market that will get them too much money

and you want it so bad. so that you could wait for that money to be high enough that you could run for your whole life, waiting for the weekend.

he wants to make fake diamonds. this scientific rationalism, mechanism, reductionism and materialism necessary - romantics argue for a metaphysical or spiritual dimension of non rational form . a none knowing .imagination intuition dreams, emotions subconscious. this lust or ours, caught between terror and desire

good lord. II's is too anxious, and sick, and miserable that they think that anyone can be clever enough to slay the symptoms of your meaningless life. that a glassed alchemist behind a lab can be smart enough to fix your flawed life. your broken but natural human nature.

that a religion would save you, or that man on the corner with the 8 steps to happiness. so much frustration. and though this is like Berthold's voice droning in my head, I feel like it is talking to me. why why am I still going through this bricks of research. why.

why do we keep chasing for the same goddamn things.

because you want to be the flame alchemist.

I don't even know what that is anymore.

Central is mad they're impatient with the pinnacle of modern alchemy.

Maes says I'm getting special treatments since they think it'll make me go faster, they've been delaying my deployment giving me perks.

Though the carrot is nice, and I;ve long since paid madame my debt, I wonder what's the stick.

I was holding a gun in target practice when suddenly miss Hawkeye disregards all logical practicality and stands in my line of fire. Stands in the fucking line of fire!

WHAT ARE YOU DOING. god. RIZA. I only call her that in my head.

She blinks for a moment and handles my clasped hands carefully but firmly positions it right in front of her torso; she holds my gaze. I think of tugging away but I decide against it, and just stand as still as stone still wracking my head with what could be possibly happening. Why am I pointing a gun to her chest, why is she looking at me like that?

'are you a bloodthirsty soldier yet?'

'NO.'

(I could read it in the air.)

(still thinking twice about lives)

(god. yes. ! please)

she makes me say it louder.

'never.'

She releases me, letting my heart beat easy again my head dizzy with the rush of adrenaline and the encounter. Is she some sort of masochist?! 'that was not funny. that was extremely dangerous you knew it, now what was that.'

'Good. you're still there Mister mustang.'

'Sheesh miss Hawkeye.' I disarm the weapon and point it to the earth. And take a deep sigh of relief, confusion, anxiety whatever.

'of course dammit I'm still here.'

It catches you off guard. People I mean. that's how miss Elizabeth put it .

She was going to tell me a story about her father, after I insisted I had to know more about him to maybe make some progress on the flame research. 'The good news is that the localized alchemy that I thought was impossible, were actually things he's already trained me in, though I never thought it had heat applications. I have to go through everything again now. You know I've been working on this for years now.'

I''m not making this an excuse to harass you miss Hawkeye. '

'Yes, I understand mister, sorry, officer mustang. But my father was really isolated and engulfed in research, didn't pay me the least attention, and I couldn't read a single alchemical cipher.'

'You know that.'

I had just finished my training and wore the actual officer royal blue uniform that time I visited her in her office. Maybe she'd talk to me if I appeared to be on official business.

'You're telling me the truth?'

'yes I am.'

'Please, miss Hawkeye. '

She did this often to me those days. Avoiding me, distracting herself with her things, pushing me away, being so cold every time our conversations wandered to topics like if-I'll-ever-get-flame-alchemy or if-state-alchemists-are-really-all-that. She's avoiding me and I don't know what I did okay?

'Is there any incident that the your father behaved peculiarly miss Hawkeye, please?' I was begging her to talk to stopped messing with her papers.

'You want me to be honest?'

'yes.'

She settles in her chair ad looked me in the eye. Hmm.

'One day, I arrived from school really late. and I find him sitting on the dining table',

I picture it my head. Miss Hawkeye from school, master Berthold on the table.

_'__The table is set and the dinner ready and him just sitting there doing absolutely nothing. I had just rushed home that time, and had to check on mother, and I was just there in our flat (we were in a flat then). I paced frantically, rush to by chores, the asked him: what are you doing father? why haven't you eaten dinner?'_

_'__I waited for you.' he says and he cocks his head at me. It wasn't anything special but I'd take it. This unsuspecting love. I swallow down the surprise, put down my things and, sat down on the table. We had dinner together. Now, what a peculiar thing. _

'Yes, miss Hawkeye.'

Now dear reader I'll tell you an incident that happened afterwards. I received deployment papers to Faufas in the western border. It was my first assignment and I realized it would be difficult to visit her if i was so far wast. I was leaving that day, and my mind was so fraught with the idea of real combat,so

'Miss Elizabeth, I don't even know when I'll be back at central.'

I just gave this formal handshake and announced that I'll be on my way.

'Please do take care of yourself. be safe.'

Oh.

'Sure miss Elizabeth, you also.'

Now, what a peculiar thing. I found it hard to tear my eyes from her. This unsuspecting love catches you off guard. It's just for half a moment, but then that's all you really need.


	18. Chapter 18

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing:  
0.0px;"There was a menaced thrill in the air. News was spreading that the fuhrer would make an announcement tomorrow and I was spending my nights in the lab trying to consolidate sensitive notes, today I smelt all the metals. All these trophies from prestigious events, (noble prizes from previous alchemysts) the military will know it's solid gold. They would be so easy to raid,  
I would have to melt them into cubes to make them easier to hide,  
less conspicuous. Now I didn't expect miss Hawkeye to come with me,  
saying that she knows how to handle the vessels./span/p 


	19. Chapter 19

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"We stopped where the road was flanked by ruins and we climbed out of the trucks./span/p 


	20. Chapter 20

Before I left for war I didn't feel like I amounted to much.

I wasn't necessarily anything in the grand scheme of things and didn't have men recognize me as they did my father, or bow to me like they did to my master Berthold. I didn't need to be as important as them. it's just that having their lives around my head makes me feel so anxious. We are dead now, what have you done with what we've given you? the walls seem caving in and there was no point to all of this.

I didn't want it in the first place!

are you sure.

I had no choice. You want the world when you're a child.

I thought that children where wise.

they are naive and innocent and think the world beautiful

the world is beautiful

but it is also rotten!

as if that were the only paradox.

...

...

you believed that my alchemy was like magic. and that a man of power can be kind. is it still true now? is it entirely wrong?

no.

then?

no. It's too hard. i'm shit scared.

poor child.

I but-

stop stammering!

...

you still want it right?

_pause. _yes

why?

and i thought about my answer:

because I want the world like a child. because I've suddenly found real things, my treasures that I'll never want to let go of. things that are bigger than me and myself that i'm willing to be scared shit for. because i've loved too much.

like a child.

yes.

being scared is good. it means you have something you have something worth fighting for.

I have one regret. if you could call it that.

I was staring at the news office all dressed up, my head a little whoozy with borrowed confidence and with the biggest smiles. I was being pushed around my Maes, Everyone tended to do this these days.

You know, getting married and all.

and maybe I should and I shouldn't and even if I failed in all things I could fall back on hughes favorite phrase. at least I can call myself a husband, I'm a lover. I peer though the glass, judging where her table is what she'll say what she'll do if it's such a big deal. I think I can almost see her. I'm rendered immobile.

'You're kidding me.'

'I'm not. I literally can't feel my legs Maes.'

(you're worthless!

I get that a lot.)

'what's wrong.' he asks

'maybe I'm allergic to the universe.'

'oh gaddamit Roy we need to get moving !'

And this was how I went to Maes' wedding without a date. For crying out loud roy! Maes would yell. It's just a date. the wedding I'd tell you, was definitely beautiful.

Maes would yell at me again for more important reasons.

Especially when we were drunk and I'd insist on holing up in our quarters just staring at that research one more time. talking to myself. maybe I could find that missing page, that one cipher that seems to be missing I have to I'm so close.

'You should give up on that research Roy.'

It was like a douse of cold water on my back. maybe I heard him wrong

'Inspiring encouragement from my best friend.'

'give. up.'

'Roy.' he slinks to my side and impedes the page I had been writing on.'You should listen to me because I'm exactly your best friend.'

'She's hiding it from you for a reason'

He was indignant merciless. (the cold water was know seething like ice was now electrocuted and my stomach was in my throat you don't say that in front of me. Maes not to my face.)

'You don't know that.' I said.

'And I don't blame her one bit roy. i mean look what the research did to her dad.

(is this a nightmare? what is)

'He died of tuberculosis Maes.'

'That flame alchemy is strapping a bomb to your chest! He was categorized psychologically insane since he was constantly hunted by the whole state to turn him into a human weapon.(his voice was raised now, mad) if the research doesn't get you killed you'll want to die anyway. that thing is too much roy. give it up! Maes grows quiet.

'I have to finish master berthold's magnum opus.'

Maes shoves me at the side.

'Don't you get it roy: you're his magnum opus. look at you! loved commanding officer who who saved bloodshed in Giyoir. You're the lead he's turned into gold. heck There's a whole lot of us who don't want to lose you, heck don't want to lose this heap of treasure. he jabs at my chest. _you're so gadam selffish roy wanting to be the flame alchemist, a creature. '_

'Roy give it up.'

this unterminable pause.

'Maes. the war won't let me.'

this unterminable ungodful awful pause.

'then survive gaddamit.'

On other days the conversation would be brief. the ones I hear in my head.

stop trying to be 'something' roy. the thing -things and somethings that aspire to be something and be the everything of anything.

you don't need the whole world to love you. in this thing filled world.

sometimes one thing is more than enough

sometimes that thing is only one person.

you don't need the whole world to love you. maybe you only need one person.

Riza still dreams of war. One even set in the medieval ages with ancient realms and feudal lands. A stupid red king has charged into the fray to ignite courage. She leaps to him.

'SIR.'

He halts swerves, oblivious.

'um you must go this way.' she says hurriedly with concealed panic, pointing her arm to the west. There were clanking armor all over them and he had to survive, in the unlawful deluge of people and warring spears, horses and shields.

'alright.'

He escapes

She cringes with an -arrow wound she had just abruptly saved him from. But it is so fucked up because she's happy, that he's safe. No one will honor her as her mail is stained dark red and she limps to the side heaving, she grips at the hilt of her sword.

'You've had enough.' a tall man whispers. Her tall brother scoops her up like a spirit from nowhere. from the flanks and scolds her. brings her to the side and takes the hilt of her sword away from her. 'No Hayate I need it to fight- the kingdom needs him, he's not ready to die.'

'that's not for you to decide child. you're the one who's unprepared.'

She looks down.

'He's gone now my lady. he whispers to Elizabeth.'

Hayate strokes her hair calmly as the noises of the battle continues beyond the walls.

'but the king will put up a fight.'


	21. Chapter 21

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"The clash of the khymykal setups and the bangs of large cases would drum into his head as the uniformed men from the other squadron searched his laboratory./span/p 


	22. Chapter 22

p style="margin: 0px; font-family:  
Helvetica;"span style="letter-spacing:  
0.0px;"General Grunman can only deduce so much how somehow,  
that day, he found himself looking at his long lost granddaughter, in the blue of the military uniform, heaving, demanding for attention./span/p 


	23. Chapter 23

She held my hand, the warmth and pressure reminding me of my senses. the room was dark, but the bed was soft; I didn't expect that she would be the first to confess. In fact I didn't expect her to confess at all. The news is overwhelming, the last sigil is on your body Riza? (yes she allowed me to call her that. Back then, I dunno.) It would be dangerous if anyone kidnapped you and-

I can handle myself, mister mustang.

You should not leave my sight. This is a direct order from a senior officer. (by god, the enlistment was something I couldn't swallow yet.)

I'm always with you.

(This was infuriating.)I need you closer.

I lean into her enveloping my arm around her waist, kissed her on her lips back then, when I was allowed to. She lifted the thin bed covers, and folded her legs around me, then kissed back. I struggled with my broken body, but we couldn't wait.

Let me do it for you. So she slipped into me joyously.

This was the moon being dipped into the ocean, strung by strings by passing fisherman as they pull it across the ocean to meet water-kissed sun. This was the red king ylarius marrying the white queen and in their mercurial bath to a kingdom and a dove. This was hot sulfur gasping quicksilver mercury to yield magnum opus, the great work, an emerald stone.

When I lay on the bed, both our bodies spent, my eyes traced the red patterns that danced before me. the latin, the geometry, the allusions to mercurial snakes and royal crowns. the metamorpheses which gave this Hawkeye wings. I finally get it now.

The dua of mercury and sulfur is no coincidence.

Only in our union can we access Berthold's greatest work.

Like a paradox of one hand clapping, we lost ourselves in the thing they loved and found ourselves there too. Both created and destroyed. We are his great work, his magnum opus, breaker of laws, pinnacle of modern alchemy.

What do you pray for?

A quick and easy death is what they pray for. This is what they whisper and beg to saint Benedict before they're sent off to war. What i wish to grant them. But this is no excuse. I am not god, I can't possibly pass judgement.

What i've sent feel likes hellfire.

They call it post traumatic stress disorder , and dull it with military procedures. They pass rules to not shoot medics and reporters because war wouldn't be humane that way. If it possibly will. There are blockades now everywhere and madame christmas doesn't sell redemption. We try so hard to survive and survive but shoot gun guns in the air for honors for dead people in mass graves.

The typed sheets are punctured unto a notice board. The names of the men in repose yield multiple sheets and it is all too heavy that the pin gives way until all the white sheets scatter to the floor, dirtied.

Roy has blessed thousands for their quick and easy death.

He approaches his officer Hawkeye who seems so different with short hair, seems so different in the hot Ishvalan sun surrounded by steel vehicles and weapons of war and after killing innocent people.

I would understand miss Hawkeye if you order me to offer resign now.

No, that is not necessary sir.

But i'm a monster.

Then your self disgust is proof you're still there. She looks at him now. you're _still _there. She pounds at his chest as if it were an order. And he didn't need the whole world to believe in him, sometimes he just needs one person. One person and giving up doesn't shit count.

you're dream _sir_.

right.

I've seen my fair share of the war being bunkmates with the now flame alchemist colonel Roy Mustang. He's argued the pointlessness of attempts to protect a whole army. i argued with him that maybe if we protect those that are close to you, the protection would pyramid to include around see, to protect the whole nation you would have to be on top, you would have to be fuhrer. Ha. What a job.

There was a time Roy Mustang thought it impossible to be flame alchemist. At least he told me that anyway, becoming fuhrer didn't seem so improbable now. At least to him. Either way I had a personal stake at his career advancement and if he asked me to keep his secrets, I listened and kept them well.

This secret in particular was him asking me to help him burn off a part of Riza's back tattoo that was just to dangerous to be deciphered by other eyes. I offered it was best to do it when they were stationed in central where they had linens and running water to help with treating the burns, dammit don't do it here in the goddamn dessert. It sounded logical, reasoned practical, but there was no logic in burning someone alive, especially someone you loved. There was no logic, only inescapable lead and darkness in this extinction and war, like sadistic litany. We were done patching her up and the quarters began to smell like alcohol and antiseptic and the room has grown quiet as Roy sat beside Riza now.

Awkward, that I was standing there in the corner of the room, I mean sure i'll help with the bandages and keeping things quiet but I didn't want to intrude. It felt private but also so personal and raw that I couldn't look away. I gaped at them as if I were in a trance. He was telling her his dream of being fuhrer, holding her hand by the bedside. How embarrassing to be honest. Dod, I gave him the idea, and now he's taking it to seriously it's endearing I hate it. Oh and there was the most curios thing where the sun lit Riza's hair the most beautiful sheen her hand lovingly reaching for Roy's head. she pulls herself up closer to him, I see her naked body wrapped in bandages and I'm at awe at her strength.

I should really note be looking. She's close to him now, whispers something to him that makes Roy break into a magnificent smile. It was pure, powerful that his light overpowered me, that way he looked at her he could've been soaring. They were soaring.

I felt at incredible urge to run out of the room and scream out on the road. I would yell eureka ! eureka ! I've seen the most wonderful alchemy, I'de scream like a mad man 'til my lungs gave out EUREKA. EUREAKKAH. they've turn lead into gold! i've seen them turn lead into the purest gold!

and I'd be left breathless.

fin.

* * *

to anyone who read the whole thing: good gracious I thank you :)


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